The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-09-08

which you are going that you forget what
is to become of your wife and children
after you are dead. You can go out
of this world without leaving
a dollar and yet die happy if
you could not provide for them; you can
trust them in the hands of the God who
owns all the harvests, and the herds, and
the flocks; but if you could pay the pre-
miums on a policy and neglect them, it is
a mean thing for you to go up to Heaven
while they go into the poor-house. You,
at death, move into mansion, river
front, and they move into two rooms on
the fourth story of tenement house in a
back street. When they are out at the
elbows and knees the thought of your
splendid robe in Heaven will not keep
them warm. The minister may preach
splendid sermon over your remains, and
the quartet may sing like four angels in
the organ loft, but your death will be a
swindle. You had the means to provide
for the comfort of your household when
you left it, and you wickedly neglected it.
"Oh, says some one, 81 have more faith
than you; believe when go out of this
world the Lord will provide for them"
Go to Blackwell's Island; go through all
the poor houses of the country, and l will
show you how often God provides for the
neglected children Of neglected parents.
That he provides for them through public
charity. AS for myself, I would rather
have the Lord provide for my family in a
private home, and through my own indus
try and paternal and conjugal faithful
ness. But, says some man:
81 mean in the next ten or twenty years
RI DO 7 ,Lon
leave my family, when I go out of this
world, very comfortable"
How do you know you are going to live
ten or twenty years? If we could look up
the highway of the future, we would see it
crossed by pneumonias, and pleurisies,
and consumptions, and colliding railroad
trains, and runaway horses, and breaking
bridges, and funeral professions. Are you
so certain you are going to live ten or
twenty years you can warrant your house.
hold any comfort after you go away from
them? Besides that, the vast majority of
men die poor! Two only out of hundred
succeed in business. Are you very GER
tain you are going to be one of the two?
Rich one day, poor the next. A man in
New York got $2,OO0,OOO, and the money
turned his brain, and he died in the lunatic
asylum. All his property was left with
the business firm, and they swamped it,
and then the family of the insane man
was left without a dollar. In eighteen
months the prosperity, the insanity, the
insolvency and the complete domestic
ruin.
Besides that, there are men who die
solvent, who are insolvent before they get
under the ground, or before their estate is
settled up. How. soon the auctioneer's
mallet can knock the life out of an estate.
A man thinks the property is worth $751;
600; under forced sale it brings $1,000.
The business man takes advantage of the
crisis and he cOmpels the widow of his
deceased partner to sell out to him at a
ruinous price or loose all. The stock was
supposed to be very valuable, but it has
been so "watered" that when the executor
tries to sell it he is laughed out of Wall
street, or the administrator is ordered by
the Surrogate to wind up the whole affair.
The estate was supposed, at the mans
death, to be worth $4,000; but after the in :
debtedness had been met, and the bill of
the doctor, and the undertaken, and the
tombstone-cutter have been paid, there is
nothing left.
4A0o AAOdAS tuc Cu1uTSu are TO come
home from school and go to work. That
means the complete hardship of the wife,
turned out with nothing but needle to
fight the great battle of the world. Tear
down the lambrequins, close the piano, rip
up the Administer, sell out the wardrobe
and let the mother take q child in each
hand and trudge out into the desert of the
world. A life insurance would have him
dered all that.
"But," says some one, 81 am man of
small means, and / can't afford to paw the
premium"
That is sometimes a lawful and a genuine
excuse, and there is no answer to it; but in
nine cases out of ten when a man saws
that he smokes up in cigars and drinks
down in wine, and expends in luxuries
enough money to have paid the premium
on life insurance policy which would
have kept his family from beggary when
he is dead. A man ought to put himself
down on the strictest economy until he can
meet this Christian necessity. You have
no right to the luxuries of life until you
have made such provision.
l admire what was said by Rev, DIR.
Guthrie, the great Scottish preacher. A
few years before his death he stood in q
public meeting and declared:
"When I came to Edinburgh the people
sometimes laughed at my blue stockings
and at my cotton umbrella, and they said
l looked like common plowman, and
they derided me because lived in house
for which paid EDS rent year, and often
times walked when would have been
very glad to have cab; but, gentlemen, l
did all that because / wanted to pay the
premium on a life insurance that would
keep my family comfortable if / should
die"
That 1 take to be the right expression of
an honest, intelligent, Christian man.
The utter indifference of many people on
this important subject accounts for much
of the crime and pauperism of this day.
Who are the children sweeping the cross
ings with broken broom, and begging of
you penny as you go by? Who are the
lost souls gliding under the gaslight, in
thin shawls? All, they are the victims of
want; in many of the cases the forecast of
parents and grandparents might have
prevented it. God only knows how they
struggled to do right. They prayed until
the tears froze on their cheeks, they sewed
on the sack until the breaking Of the day;
but they could not get enough money to
pay the rent; they could not get enough
money to decently clothe themselves: and